It’s a sign of the times when one of the most hopeful thoughts I encountered over the weekend as I scoured the internet for signs of intelligent life was this:
“There are a lot of stops along the railroad track of bad before you get to Hitler Station.”
Not terribly reassuring.. That was David Frum. I do not know if he was the first one to say it.
Moving on in the process of de-briefing the horrifying election results, I share this podcast (which does not have David Frum in it) and hope some of you will find it helpful. I found it informative, not too long, not too depressing, reality based, honest, not too many tired cliches, no lectures.. well maybe one. They reviewed some of the data. They were able to discuss mistakes that we made without blaming. I felt a bit more stabilized after watching and that is worth a lot right now.
The always great Simon Rosenberg and Courier Newsroom Tara McGowan join David Rothkopf on Deep State Radio.
Best wishes to Ryan Melton who ran a heck of a campaign as he did in 2022. We hope you run again.
Hello all,
After taking some time to decompress and rest, I wanted to reach out to you one last time (at least for now) with gratitude. I want to thank all of you for your help, whether it be via donations, volunteering, spreading the word, voting, or however else you helped boost this campaign. I will be forever grateful for all the care and support from countless folks I encountered on the campaign trail.
As I’ve always said, this is going to be a long term build in the 4th, a district where a Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. House seat in 40 years, and one the national party has abandoned. However, the progress from my ‘22 campaign to my ‘24 campaign is undeniable. We improved our percentage of votes earned overall by 3 percent, jumping from 30% to 33%. We improved our performance in 31 of the 36 counties in the district. Considering I’ve had so many ’22 supporters move out of the district and state and therefore couldn’t vote for me in ’24, the 3 percent jump felt higher than that. We won Story County again. We had 17 state house candidates running in the 4th in ‘24 compared to only 10 in ‘22, and we have held some of the wealthiest in the world accountable and have delayed their progress on the eminent domain abuse-driven CO2 pipelines that threaten our public health and water. When I was arguably the first candidate to run against those pipelines back in early ’22, I was told it was a fool’s errand, that they were all but guaranteed to be constructed.
We’ve also forced conversations that weren’t happening before at the candidate level here regarding water pollution, the cancer crisis, the damaging influence of excessive corporate power on our politics and our governance, and the hollowing out of rural Iowa. We also got a lot more folks engaged and out to campaign events, and I’m so excited about the growth of our county parties over the last two years.
We also started to build a cross-partisan populist movement, earning an unprecedented crossover endorsement from my general election opponent’s Republican primary challenger, Kevin Virgil, an endorsement that forced the Iowa GOP leadership into a week of a very public panic attack (in which they didn’t address a single concern of Virgil’s).
We also engaged a lot of young folks, and have been answering emails from high schoolers since the election thanking the campaign for what we represented and urging me to run again for the 4th in ’26.
I don’t know what capacity I’ll do this in at this point, but I’ll continue to help the building of our 4th District Democratic Party, and will continue to hold Feenstra accountable for his lack of representation. We aren’t quitting. There are too many voices that would go unheard otherwise, and too many painful problems our district is suffering from that would become much worse if we quit. I’ve had people post-election ask me to run for governor in ’26, to run against Ernst for Senate, to run in the 4th again, to run for state-level office, and to run for IDP Leadership. I’m not sure what my next steps will be in that context, but the focus will always be on doing what I think would be most helpful to the cause of the people. In ’22 and ’24, since I was the only person on the primary ballot in the 4th race, that role was clearly running for the 4th. We’ll see what the future holds.
Thank you to all the candidates, volunteers, county party folks, and others that helped move the needle forward in the 4th. Let’s keep building together. Let’s remained plugged in and engaged. I know the battle will be tough and long, but as MLK said, “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It is us that need to work to bend that arc.
I’m going to rest and have a normal life again for a little while. I’m tired, but grateful for all the love and well wishes I’ve received from folks of all political affiliations over the past week in the 4th. I ask you to remain subscribed to this newsletter if possible, so we can stay connected and build the momentum we’ve started here together.
Remarks as prepared for the Armistice Day observance in Iowa City on Nov. 11, 2024.
Thank you for joining us during this observance of Armistice Day. My name is Paul Deaton. I was a founding member of the Iowa Chapters of Veterans for Peace. When we organized the chapter, we had veterans from every armed conflict going back to World War II. Some of our members have died, and I ask for a moment of silence in their honor.
I intend to keep my remarks brief. Some of you who know me may realize how difficult that will be for me. Nonetheless, let’s get started.
In World War I we find the beginnings of the misinformation and disinformation that became so prevalent in our society. There are 5 things I would like to say about that.
Point 1: There were conspiracy theories about the war.
Was World War I a hoax? No, yet conspiracy theories were prevalent. During the War, the American home front was awash with them alleging internal German enemies were intentionally spreading disease among both human and animal populations, most egregiously during the 1918 influenza pandemic. While false, these stories nevertheless revealed Americas’ shifting relationships to the environment, warfare, and the federal state. They channeled immediate fears over what type of war, and what type of enemy, the nation faced, as well as deeper, Progressive-era anxieties related to the dramatic expansions of government and scientific expertise in American life. It underlines how the war permitted individuals to discuss, denounce, and contest state and scientific authority at this moment in the early twentieth century. In my view many of the conspiracy theories we hear today have their roots in this.
Point 2: Allied Propaganda
Propaganda was used by both the allies and the Germans during the World War.
Allied governments launched propaganda efforts in the days after the invasion, pushing out terrifying, often untrue tales, published in newspapers, fliers, and pamphlets. There were stories of bayoneted babies, mass rape of girls, and old men who obediently turned over useless rifles, and were shot on the spot by heartless “barbarians.” No doubt the intent was to stoke the fire of support for the war.
Point 3: German propaganda.
For the Germans, the goal of propaganda was to make the war seem less devastating than it was. More soldiers were needed at the front, so government officials downplayed the number of casualties to recruit them. The truth about the scale of casualties – an estimated 40 million civilian and military personnel dead and wounded – could only be kept secret using propaganda. The total number of deaths includes more than 9 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was between 6 and 13 million. Disease, including the influenza pandemic, took about a third of these lives. World War I ranks among the deadliest conflicts in human history. Suppression of this fact was a goal of German propaganda.
Point 4: The Armistice.
I visited the Glade of the Armistice while I lived in Europe. It’s in the French Forest of Compiegne where the Germans and Allied Supreme Commander signed the Armistice we commemorate today. They used a rail car for the ceremony. Years later, in 1940, Hitler used the same rail car to accept the French surrender. Hitler had obvious propaganda reasons for doing so. I saw a similar rail car in France while I was there, although not the same one used in 1918. The original disappeared after the Nazis took possession of it. I remember how quiet it was in the forest that day. It was a day filled with meaning.
Point 5: Living History
Veterans of World War One are deceased. The veteran I knew was my Grandfather who never spoke to me of the war. We were more concerned with his black lung disease contracted during decades of coal mining in Illinois. Family lore is Grandfather arrived in France shortly before the Armistice and did not see conflict. He was there six months waiting to return to Illinois. If you have a memory of the war and its veterans like mine, today is a day to remember.
As living memory fades let us hope and pray that the World War I dead shall not have died in vain.
In conclusion, I’d like to read a poem used by the allies to recruit soldiers. The idea was for new people to take up arms to replace the fallen. You may know this one. In Flanders Fields is by Canadian physician John McCrae, published December 8, 1915.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
First let me say that we will forego the quiz this week. Writing the quiz weekly is an exercise that allows me to review lots of different aspects of the previous week, often in a whimsical mood where I can slide in a joke and watch a cat video while making fun of pompous asses like Trump.
This week I am hardly whimsical and frankly I fear for our future as I fear for the futures of my family and particularly of friends who are gay or people of color. There is an impending cloud on the horizon much like must have been on the horizon in 1933. Right now is a scary time in America.
There are some things that I have noticed trending over many years that keep gnawing at my innards. This seems to be a good time to at least throw them out to let other folks chew on them. So here we go in no order.
The first thing is that for several decades there has been a huge move to the right among democracies worldwide. The video below gives a kind of a sampling of what is going on: 28 minutes:
As noted in the video once right wing leadership takes power they seldom relinquish it. I am sure we can expect that from the next Trump regime. While the trappings of democracy often still exist, the mechanics of how the system works will be drastically altered. Elections take place, but the rules only allow certain people to vote. They are able to build a permanent election victory machine within the confines of their constitutions.
You may have also noted that many of the talking points in Europe and other right wing countries around the world focus on very similar takes on problems that the RW blows into catastrophes. Immigration, information sources, victimization of the party – all just like the MAGAs in the US.
Along with the major world wide turn to the extreme right as the go to saviors on political problems is the continuing concentration of money in a few hands. Among those few hands are people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. One of the major problems of having such a concentration of money in few hands is that the rich want to use their money to rig the system so they can get even more money.
The best way to rig the system so they can continue to pile up money is to buy the politicians who make the rules. Having those who make rules making rules in your favor because they owe you something is probably the best way to do it. Those same rule makers can make rules that hurt rivals or force poor people into selling their souls for nearly nothing just in order to survive.
Money is the lifeblood of politics and the extreme right wing around the world has the money spigots of rich pouring into their coffers. For such “donations” the right wing in any country is usually more than happy to do what they need to pay the rich back.
Which brings us to something I fear will be among the first actions of the coming administration and that is the destruction of the ‘administrative’ state here in the US. Those federal agencies that the country depends on to keep businesses from killing or screwing us all for a profit is literally on the chopping block.
Got a pill you got to take? Right now we depend on the FDA to keep the drug companies honest as to ingredients, dosage, purity and manufacturing standards. Well, boy, that’s a lot of money that the company could keep for profit if the damn Feds would get off their back.
Such deregulation was hardly mentioned during the campaign, but this may be the single most critical thing MAGAs will destroy. The assurance that consumer goods are made honestly and that someone is actually watching them allows us freedom to purchase and consume with little worry. Just imagine the fear of eating out if eating out may come with death due to a restaurants cleanliness standards.
Corruption, corruption, corruption is the right’s lifeblood. And it could kill you.
Charlie Sykes: “Whatever the final margin, the American people have returned this blatantly, dangerously unfit man to power. In the end, nothing mattered. Not the sexual assaults, the frauds, the lies, or the felonies. Not the raw bigotry of his campaign; not the insults, nor the threats. In the most graphic terms imaginable, the American people were warned of the danger. His previously loyal vice president refused to endorse him; his top general called him a ‘total fascist’; some of his closes aides and cabinet members described in detail his erratic character and his indifference to the Constitution.”
“But in the end, Trump was right. He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and still win a presidential election. But, we know now that it was worse. Trump never fired a weapon on a New York City street, but he stood at the center of our politics and incited a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. And it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that he tried to overturn a free and fair election…”
“This is the hardest part about today: realizing that our fellow Americans saw all of that; watched all of that; listened to all of that, and still said, ‘Yes, that’s what we want.’ That’s who we are.”
“Open the lens a bit larger, and we find that it goes way beyond just this election; virtually every crisis America is facing right now is either caused or exacerbated by the corruption of big money authorized by five corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court.
They are responsible for our crises of gun violence, the drug epidemic, homelessness, political gridlock, our slow response to the climate emergency, a looming crisis for Social Security and Medicare, the situation on our southern border, even the lack of affordable drugs, insurance, and healthcare.
All track back to a handful of Supreme Court justices who’ve sold their votes to billionaires in exchange for extravagant vacations, luxury yachts and motorhomes, private jet travel, speaking fees, homes, tuition, and participation in exclusive clubs and billionaire networks that bar the rest of us from entry.”
from a post on democraticunderground.com
HL Mencken: (July 26, 1920)
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
This whole Jimmy Kimmel video is a 16 minute long opening monologue. The important message of the monologue starts at about 7:40 and ends around 9:40. If you do not want to wade through the video here is what he said in those two minutes:
“It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard working immigrants who make this country great, for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech, for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO, for the truth, for democracy, for decency, for everyone who voted again him, and guess what—it was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too, you just don’t realize it yet”
@jimmykimmel
As Kimmel notes,“it was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too, you just don’t realize it yet.” The Trump and MAGA destruction of our stable system of government will reach into every corner of our society. Perhaps the only ones who will be spared will be the extreme rich and those with power.
I had planned to write a very different column for this weekend. It would have focused on how the US electorate could envision the damage that another Trump term could wreak and could understand that stability and policies that would move toward income equality would be much better for our country.
Now,like millions of others we are assessing the future which appears bleak compared to the Biden years of lowering inflation and incredible job growth. Our future may be playing out right now in Argentina where a a Trump wannabe (Javier Milei) took power last December.
“If you have any doubts about how Project 2025 would be implemented, you have to look at what has happened in the last year in Argentina”, human rights lawyer Paula Ávila-Guillén, told me in a thought-provoking interview. She is the executive director of the Women’s Equality Center (WEC) which works on communication strategies on reproductive health and justice in Latin America.
I knew what was happening in my country Argentina. A 30% cut in state spending and an eleven percentage point increase in poverty in less than a year don’t go unnoticed – even if you don’t live there. Nor do the struggles that family and friends go through in a society already used to economic crashes. Still, Ávila-Guillén’s provocation prompted me to delve into the way Project 2025 is being carried out back home
<<snip>>
When Milei took office, he warned the Argentine people that their economic plight might briefly worsen under his harsh measures. This is exactly what millions are now suffering: more poverty and recession.
In the last days of the US election campaign, a similar message was spread by billionaire Elon Musk who put more than $100m into Trump’s campaign, and who would be, according to Trump, his “secretary of cost-cutting”. Such cuts, Musk warned, might cause “temporary hardship”, but they were necessary in the path to “long-term prosperity”.
Prosperity for whom is not clear – but a recipe for hardship, denial of rights and persecution is on display in Argentina, if you can bear to take a look.
Mark well your economic status and your cultural status as the Biden presidency ends to refer back to in four years. We may or may not have another presidential election at that time. The question will be if it is free and fair.
Heather Cox Richardson interviewing President Joe Biden
Heather Cox Richardson, America’s most popular historian, had the following to say about the election of Donald Trump. I am encouraged whenever someone of her stature highlights the propaganda that is creating an ill-informed American electorate. In my view the first order of business for the resistance should be to find an antidote for the invisible (to us) virus that has taken over the country at this time in history. Blog for Iowa has posted extensively about Iowa’s particular problems with right wing media and the limitations of our statewide press. I hope you will read Richardson’s entire article today on Substack. She also posts her daily articles on Facebook. Additional links to her other platforms are below the article.
Richardson begins by describing the global trend toward dictatorships and away from democracy and cites Biden’s efforts to shore up democracy during his time in office. She goes on to mention China’s leader Xi Jinping saying democracy is “obsolete” and cites Russia’s undermining of NATO. She spends the most ink on Hungarian dictator Victor Orban who Trump spoke with after the election.
She also mentions the racist and misogynistic elements of what Trump is offering and explains what voters thought they were voting for. She mentions Project 2025 as well.
I believe the non-Trump voters understand this danger. What I believe most have not taken a deep dive into, is the incidious nature of propaganda, its pervasiveness and power, and how it has taken over the minds and cultures of regular people and communities in America. Richardson addresses this in the following excerpt. [Bolding is mine].
HCR:
“But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.
In the U.S., pervasive right-wing media, from the Fox News Channel through right-wing podcasts and YouTube channels run by influencers, have permitted Trump and right-wing influencers to portray the booming economy as “failing” and to run away from the hugely unpopular Project 2025. They allowed MAGA Republicans to portray a dramatically falling crime rate as a crime wave and immigration as an invasion.They also shielded its audience from the many statements of Trump’s former staff that he is unfit for office, and even that his chief of staff General John Kelly considers him a fascist and noted that he admires German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
As actor Walter Masterson posted: “I tried to educate people about tariffs, I tried to explain that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes and are the foundation of this country. I explained Project 2025, I interviewed to show that they supported it. I can not compete against the propaganda machines of Twitter, Fox News, [Joe Rogan Experience], and NY Post. These spaces will continue to create reality unless we create a more effective way of reaching people.”
X users noted a dramatic drop in their followers today, likely as bots, no longer necessary, disengaged.
This evening, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán posted on social media that he had just spoken with Trump, and said: “We have big plans for the future!”
Since Trump will probably call off elections, we should listen to what could be the last concession speech by a US presidential candidate anyone will ever give. Starts about 25 minutes in.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
Best wishes to Ryan Melton who ran a heck of a campaign as he did in 2022. We hope you run again.
